The next day, Emperor said goodbye to Space and promised once again to keep the location secret before ascending the stairs to the exit.

Once up there, at the edge of the cliff, he put into practice what he had learned the day before. He looked down at the ground far below him, focused, and put a feet down in the empty space in front of him. Instead of falling, his feet touched the ground.

It worked, it only took him one step to get down from higher than the trees. If he had failed he would have fell from so high, he was glad it worked. He had trained a whole day to do this so he was pretty sure he would be able to do it but still, he felt relieved.

While he smiled at his own success, he went back to the place where the giant creature had collapsed. Wherever the creature had slithered, the land was devastated, the trees were torn off the ground and nothing remained aside from mud and rubbles.

The only exception was were the head of the thing fell. There, the blue liquid had spilt from the hole in the boulder and watered the surroundings. Inside the head, only half the liquid remained and outside, not a drop. Everything had been absorbed by the earth and a true mountain of flowers and grass had grown around the skull in the span of a night. It was magnificent to look at aside from the gruesome scene in the center of it.

A poor squirrel was standing at the edge of the hole in the skull. It had drunk some of the blue liquid and a small tree had grown out of its stomach. Its entrails ripped open from the inside to let the branches and roots through, killing it in the process. It was saddening to see but Emp had learned something important from it. In no way should he ever drink that liquid!

He got the poor squirrel out of his mind and put the whole head into his bag. Good thing the liquid was already in a convenient container. He only had to touch the head and it disappeared in the bag.

Afterwards, he followed the trail of destruction back to the river where he had first met the monster. He used the opportunity to continue his training with Space's blessing. He wanted to do it again and again until the movement came to him as naturally as a normal step would.

The river wasn't the same as how he had left it. Part of it had dried because most of the water was caught in the giant hole the creature had left behind. He curiously examined the hole before swiftly moving on. He still followed the river upwards until in early afternoon when he found the road Chinui had told him about. All he had to do now was to follow it. He moved quickly and nothing else disturbed his travel that day.

The road was heavily angled but with his new technique, the climb wasn't that tiring. The next day, the road still went upwards, zigzagging between mountains he couldn't see.

That day, he saw an enormous bug, as big as himself. It was a beetle possessing arms like that of a scorpion but instead of pincers, they ended with two heads. Where it's head should have been, in-between its two arms, there was only a huge sharpened horn not unlike a spear. The bug was pale green with many teal spots and possessed a fat and round body supported by many thin and tiny legs. Both of its heads were equipped with a pair of sharp mandibles and small black eyes that looked like beads on top of tiny viscous tentacles.

When it got out of the woods far behind Emperor, it instantly decided that the human would make for a good snack and went after him. Once he got over his initial surprise about finding yet another strange creature, Emp ran.

He was still unarmed and didn't feel like risking his life more than necessary. Also, he had no idea what that creature was capable of. If he couldn't take it out in one hit with the hammer, he was done for. Even the weakest creature in the world would easily take him out once the hammer drained all his energy. The only reasonable thing to do was escape.

Anyway, he already had a monster on his hunting card, there was no reason to fight this thing. Even if it was the source of something valuable, Emp felt that the fertilizer combined with the money Chinui had given him were more than enough for what he needed. Of course, he had no idea what he needed yet aside from not ending in the bug's stomach. He was sure he would find something to do with it.

He daydreamed about what to do with the money while he was chased but tanks to his space walking and the slowness of the bug, he easily escaped even without really thinking about what was happening. After night came, he asked the book about the bug. the next time he would encounter one, at least he would know what it was.

"The twin-headed impaling beetles are common asexual bugs that hunt alone. Their usual technique is to firmly grip their prey with their two pairs of mandibles and impaling it on their horn. Their back shell is hollow and used to house the eggs of the creature instead of wings. At the end of their life cycle, they gather in breeding grounds were they form offspring before carrying the eggs away for the hatching. The larvae eats the parent before dispersing.

The shell of the bug, contrary to its appearance, is brittle and a sword can easily cut through it. The horn can be used for a decent spear tip but aside from it, there are no other known use for this bug. They usually fight to the death but if one of the heads dies, they always run away. They make for a perfect prey for many predators."

What a strange creature. If he had been armed, he should have been able to defeat it. He closed the book, and did not think about it again.

In the morning, Emp climbed as high as he could in a tree to admire the surrounding scenery. On either side of the road he was following, mountains rose beyond more mountains that peeked from behind yet again more mountains. They were so tall he could barely see the top of them through the clouds. The road followed a pass between two of them. He suspected that such a convenient path did not appear between each of them, the road was probably following the weakest point through the natural wall the mountains made.

Emp observed the clouds cutting themselves in half on the mountain peaks for a while. Once again absorbed by a sight he had never experienced before. The clouds just ran into the peaks without slowing down, fearless in front of their demise. Was it brave or just foolish? Maybe they didn't care at all. Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked and they could just easily heal afterwards.

After getting back down, he noticed the temperature was warmer than it had been before, it now felt too hot to travel. Since the road had left the river, there was nowhere to fill up his canteen anymore. He would have to wait for the next water source but he didn't feel stressed about it, there should be many more on the way. He was moving quite fast as well, it would take no time at all to reach one.

It was still early but he was already drenched in sweat from the heat. He just wanted to lie down somewhere and wait for the temperature to go down. In the end, he continued to walk anyway, it wasn't smart to lie down in the woods and he had a long way to go still.

The road went up and down many times before it finally started going downwards for good in the afternoon. Many empty spaces started to show up in the tree line. The trees grew in small patches and in between each of those, many ponds and tall grass took the place. Many of those ponds were made of stagnant water but some flowed through the grass into more ponds situated lower. The water here didn't seem as good as the river.

Mosquitoes harassed him by millions and sometimes, on the other side of the many ponds, he could get a glimpse of an animal or creature going for a drink. He had not seen many living creatures since his departure but here, they were everywhere. Was it because they were harder to see in the dense forest or they were just more numerous here?

The sound of the toads had buried the chirping of the birds and the road twisted and turned to dodge all that water. It failed many times and Emp's boots were quickly covered in mud but at least, the things he could glimpse in his surroundings ignored him. That was what he thought until he crossed path with a second beetle.

This time, the beetle appeared in front of him, he would have to bypass it to move on. He forgot to breathe once again as the beetle charged at him. Emp had two choices, either he could quit the road and find a way around it or he could try to space walk past it. He didn't want to fill his boots with water so he went for the second option. When the bug would be about to reach him, he would step either on its left or right and it would become easy to escape it. Now that he was mentally prepared, he only had to wait for the bug to catch up to him. He was about to do it when something unexpected happened.

The beetle sank into the mud or rather, the mud moved on its own to entrap it. The monster struggled against the earth but it had no effect on the mud slowly creeping up its legs. Once the creature understood it would never be able to cross the mud pit, it tried to back out of it but it only helped the mud creep on its back. Annoyed, the insect opened and closed its shell in quick motions to throw off the mud but the thing refused to let go.

Emp could clearly see that the scene in front of him was everything but normal but the insect was too dumb to realize. It only understood it was in danger when the mud crept from his back all the way to its twin necks. Panicked, the creature shook and trampled the mud but never achieved to get rid of it. In the end, the beetle tried to bite the mud off but only managed to get more of it on its heads.

The living mud quickly covered both of its heads. Emp could only watch, scared to death as the insect died slowly asphyxiated by the ground itself. The monster fell powerlessly and the mud covered it entirely until it looked like a large bump in the road.

Emp was petrified on the spot, unable to understand what had happened. If there ever was any more of those strange mud pit and he put a feet in it, would he be able to get out? If he Spacewalked into such a trap, would he be able to do a second one to get out? How was he supposed to make sure he wouldn't end up like the bug? He had been so lucky the bug was there to prevent him from walking into the trap.

He was way too scared to move a single inch forward or back. All he did was shake his feet a little to make sure he wasn't stuck himself. After a quick look around to make sure there were no other immediate danger, he took the risk of getting the book out right there to ask what was that mud.

"The mud traps are in fact a type of slime in the category of mimics. They are the most fragile of all slimes, they compensate by hunting in groups. They gather by the dozen and mimic mud until a suitable prey comes into contact with them. Not as corrosive as their many cousins, they can only smother their victims to death. They then slowly absorb the prey and use it's matter to divide themselves into more mud traps. The mud traps aren't particularly aggressive and never follow a prey that manage to escape.

They are considered fragile since they do not possess a good control ability over their own body. The nucleus that animates them always finds itself in the most active part of a mud trap meaning that the part that extends from the main body towards the prey is always its weak point. If the nucleus is damaged or removed, the mud trap dies. Since the mud trap does not only posses the appearance of liquid mud but also its consistency, it is somewhat easy to destroy. Their nucleus is used in many magic discipline."

The book told him they were weak but he had just witnessed them win over a bug as fat as a bear. Besides, the book had also called that insect weak. Did it have a different definition of weak than Emp? If those were weak, himself was completely inoffensive.

He didn't want to risk attacking the nucleus empty handed and since there were more than one in that pool, the hammer was out of the question as well. He thought that a good staff would do the trick, maybe a large stick but now, he was surrounded by mud and water. He would have to get into one of those ponds to rummage for a stick and who knew what was hiding below the surface. He shouldn't leave the road.

He searched his bag for anything that could be used for a weapon. Against the beetle it would have been useless but against the mud trap, anything at all would be useful. Unfortunately, he didn't find anything usable aside from his small knife and the fishing rod. The fishing rod was out of the question, he couldn't replace it if he ever lost it and he needed it to get himself food. The knife, on the other hand, was so small that if he ever missed the nucleus, the mud trap wouldn't have any problem to grip both the knife and his hand. It wasn't much better than fighting empty handed.

He still got it out of the bag, it wasn't exactly the best but it was still better than nothing. Then, he spacewalked to the other side of the mud pit and resumed his travel ever so slowly. Stressed at the idea that at any moment, the ground itself could rise up to swallow him, he had a hard time enjoying the scenery like he did before.

The next day, the swamp became forest again and Emp scrambled to go find a solid stick so that the events of the prior day would not repeat themselves.

The heat was still uncomfortable but less than the last day and the clouds were thickening. Rain was coming.